


not gruesome, just human.

by incalyscent



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anyways, Endgame fixit, First Kiss, Kinda, Living Together, Love Confessions, Lowercase, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, just mostly yearning in its truest form, local poet writes prose, no beta we die like men, this took a stupid amount of time to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24630607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incalyscent/pseuds/incalyscent
Summary: he doesn’t go back for steve.  steve made a choice.  as much as bucky hates it, as much as he misses him, he won’t try to sway him.  he wants him to be happy.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	not gruesome, just human.

**Author's Note:**

> oh hey, i had a night i had a day  
> i did one million stupid things  
> i said one billion foolish things  
> i'm not okay, i got a baseball bat beside my bed  
> to fight off what's inside my head  
> to fight off what's behind my meds  
> i'm lonely; lost in pain
> 
> it's alright, it's okay, it's alright, it's okay  
> you're not a monster, just a human  
> and you made a few mistakes  
> it's alright, it's okay, it's alright, it's okay  
> you're **not gruesome, just human**  
>  and you made a few mistakes
> 
> -mother mother, _it's alright._

with hank pym returned, they can go back.

bucky goes back.

he doesn’t go back for steve. steve made a choice. as much as bucky hates it, as much as he  _ misses _ him, he won’t try to sway him. he wants him to be happy.

when bucky goes back, it’s to find hydra. to find cryofreeze. and to calmly, gently, put the winter soldier out of his misery with a single bullet. at least in one timeline, steve wouldn’t have to deal with that specific heartbreak. at least bucky could live with the hitch he put in that hydra’s step.

he goes home. except he doesn’t because he hasn’t had one since he was some punk kid in brooklyn. he doesn’t think too hard about missing the whole life of his little sister. he can’t think about the tears they must have shed over him. avengers headquarters is empty and haunted without tony, and even if it wasn’t, bucky wouldn’t be able to go a day without remembering what he did to his parents. he can’t even go back to brooklyn. even after all these years, the air still just smells like steve.

wakanda is okay. it’s scorched and smells like war, but bucky is noseblind to it by now. he figures if he died there once, he can do it again.

he knows he can’t hide forever, but he wants to. in his little hut, on a small amount of land, he just wants to curl up and hide from a world he never grew up to know. he doesn’t have anyone to hold his hand through it anymore, no one that trusts him enough to take that step. science could pull the codes and the programming out of him but there was no balm for the sort of hurt he feels. time wasn’t enough. not when he existed out of it for so long.

-

bucky helps wakanda rebuild. he throws wood and sows fields, and it’s good to let something other than gunmetal wear down his skin. things don’t stop hurting - bucky isn’t sure that pain isn’t a lifetime friend, holding him around the throat - but he can forget about it, if only for a moment.

he’s barely cooled from the sweat he’d worked up working from the sun rising to its set, when someone taps at his door. it’s late, the air is cooling. he doesn’t know who it could be. fearing disaster or death he opens the door with earnest written across his face.

steve’s eyes are still the same colour that remind him of sweltering brooklyn heat, of graveyard flowers and two beds, pushed together. steve is there, outside his door, wringing his hands, looking both older and as young as bucky has ever seen him.

bucky steps back from the door, his hand falling off the handle. he hasn’t learned to name his feelings yet; sometimes he recognizes them like a friend of a friend. he takes a breath as steve looks up at him, and even bucky knows that smile is guilty, but there’s something else in those eyes. something unfettered, like relief, shining them up. 

“hey, buck,” he says. something kicks in bucky’s chest, like a punch, or a warhammer.

“no,” is all bucky can manage. it comes out cool and level, unlike the ricochet of his heartbeat. he’s happy, but he’s also furious at once; those two emotions war against each other like longtime enemies. it makes him swallow down a rawness he’s not used to, and fight a saltburn behind his eyes. steve looks confused, but bucky just says “no, you don’t get to do this to me.”

and suddenly the mask falls off, and steve’s face pulls, something so full of grief that bucky remembers holding a feather of a boy as he cried over his mother’s grave.

“buck -”

“i mourned you,” bucky says. steve stops; stops talking, stops  _ breathing _ , and looks at bucky with wide eyes. “i thought you had left me here to fend for myself in a world i don’t even  _ understand _ , for what? a girl?”

guilt flits sharp across steve’s face. “buck -”

“how is she? she seemed like a really great girl, steve, i’m happy for -”

“she gets married. she has children. i couldn’t do that to her.” he has that particular tone in his voice. not the one he put on to be captain america, some mirage of patriotism and level-headedness. he spits it like some punk standing five feet tall in a brooklyn street. bucky is quiet for a beat, stunned speechless.

“then why’d you do it?”

wakanda buzzes, filling the quiet gap. steve’s gaze falls.

“i went back to save you.”

something white-hot squeezes in bucky’s chest, surges up behind his eyes, and for one glorious moment he thinks he might cry (he can’t - hydra took that away from him) but instead he just ends up holding his breath.

steve gathers air in his lungs, shoves it out, collects some sort of courage to look back into bucky’s eyes. “but by the time i found you, someone else had gotten to you first. i’m sorry.”

it’s bucky’s turn to find somewhere else to look, for guilt to strike him across the face. he doesn’t even need to say anything; out of his peripheral, he sees steve’s shoulders drop, some kind of grief gathering across his brow.

“oh,  _ bucky _ .”

there’s seventy years of pain in those two words, a few things that went unsaid living in those syllables. the metal fingers on bucky’s hand curl up into something approximating a fist.

“i just -” bucky fights for the words through a new tightness in his throat - “i just didn’t want you to have to deal with that again.”

“i’d do  _ anything _ to make you right.”

bucky clenches his jaw against the emotion in that voice, those eyes he’s known so long. he touches the doorframe. “do you want to come in?”

steve takes two steps towards him and puts his hands on his shoulders. they fold into each other at the same time, holding each other tight like they’d loved and lost one another because they  _ have _ . steve still smells like the forties, grease and car exhaust, and bucky feels something slot into place. he couldn’t find a home because he’s holding it in his arms.

-

bucky makes steve some tea. there isn’t much room in his house; it’s bigger than the hut he started out with, but not by much. so they end up shoulder to shoulder on the bed, not quite looking at one another, not really talking.

“what are you going to do now?” bucky says, after his tea leaves have spelled out something he can’t decipher. steve smiles, small and soft, staring into his cup.

“i didn’t really get that far,” he says, “i gave sam the shield, so i guess that means i’m retired now.”

“‘bout time. you’re like a hundred, pal.”

steve laughs, a quiet sound, and turns to look at bucky with something close to recognition in his eyes. bucky knows it’s been hard, what steve’s been through. losing everyone he’s loved, including bucky, in some ways. he wonders if it’s hard to look at the one you’ve known the longest and barely see him there. he doesn’t wonder long.

“can i stay here? just for tonight.”

bucky watches him, the quiet fold of his brow, the few-days-old scruff growing on his jaw. something familiar worms its way under his ribs; and old memory he forgot he had, brought back to life.

“we can put the mattresses together, like when we were kids,” he says slowly.

steve huffs a laugh, and if bucky didn’t know him so well he wouldn’t be able to hear the tears on it. steve passes a hand over his mouth with a minute nod, his eyes not daring to meet bucky’s.

“yeah, buck,” he says, “just like when we were kids.”

-

they take bucky’s mattress off the bed and ask for a spare, and push them together on the floor, taking up most of the room.  _ we could dance in this space _ , bucky thinks, and it feels like someone else’s thought from a lifetime ago. maybe it is.

he wakes for some reason or another while the sky is still black and littered with bullet holes, and the locusts are hissing some song he’s yet to learn. outlined, he can see the broad curve of steve’s shoulder, foiled in silver. with metal fingers, bucky traces the silhouette of it without touching him, wishing he could touch him, until the gentle hands of sleep cover his eyes again.

-

“when are you going back to new york?”

steves fork hits his plate with a sound that cuts through the early morning. he looks up at bucky, his shoulders curved over his breakfast, still looking wholly unused to his height in that moment.

“do you want me to go?”

bucky is leaning against the counter, his eyes fixed out the window. “no.”

“i don’t want to leave you again.” 

bucky lets his eyes slip over to steve, and his face is wide and open, and he looks so, so tired, despite how restfully he slept.

“then don’t.”

steve smiles, small and soft and warm in his eyes. “okay.”

-

t’challa grants steve sanctuary. they move bucky out of his hut into a slightly larger house, and move his goats there. they started out in separate rooms, but too often they would shake awake and go looking for the other in the dark. eventually it just made sense to push their beds into the same room, and then eventually just just sleep in the one, together.

they have dreams about losing one another so they find each other in wakefulness. it’s not a spoken thing; one of them just wraps a hand around the other’s arm and they roll into one another as if drawn by a thread. over the curve of steve’s shoulder, the moon is always brightest. like he himself draws her light.

during a checkup, shuri says  _ white wolf, i can hear your gears turning _ . bucky shakes his head.

“sorry,” he says on instinct, and she raises an eyebrow at him. bucky sighs, fiddling with his metal fingers, freshly calibrated.

“i think i’m in love with captain america,” he says, presenting it as a joke. as per usual, shuri sees straight through him.

“no, you’re not,” she says simply, “you’re in love with steve rogers.”

“i’m in love with steve rogers.” the words burn his tongue. he’s in love with steve rogers. he has been for god knows how long - was it before or after the winter soldier? he can’t tell. he can’t remember.

“you should tell him.”

bucky nods. “i should tell him.” after all, what was one more lifetime of heartbreak?

-

he finds steve drinking coffee in the evening sun, little table next to the west-facing window holding his sketchbook, a new book of poetry, one of his hands. in that sort of light, he looks like what bucky’s ma told him angels looked like; imbued with light, powerful, but gentle. she didn’t ever say bucky had an angel looking after him. he’s not sure he does, still. but it’s nice to hope.

steve’s eyes come up, and he smiles, immediately turning his book over to save his spot. “how’d it go?”

“same old,” bucky says, metal fingers flexing. steve hums, lifting his mug to take a sip of coffee. bucky’s not sure why he does it; the caffeine does nothing for him.

“that’s good.”

bucky pours himself a cup, not because it tastes good or he needs the jitter but just to give himself something to do with his hands. “hey steve?”

“yeah?”

“how long have i been in love with you?”

steve is very quiet, and when bucky turns around his eyes are wide, staring. it’s a simple enough question, but steve seems to mull it over for a good while, his eyes scanning bucky’s frame.

“i don’t remember a time when you didn’t.”

bucky nods, casting his eyes down. “yeah. that’s what i thought.”

there’s the sound of table legs, pushed across the floor. “i thought you didn’t remember.”

bucky shrugs a shoulder, and when he looks back up, steve is standing, unsure what to do with his hands. he looks almost bashful.

“i didn’t,” bucky says, “i do now.”

there’s a silence in which the only thing bucky can hear is the true thump of his heart. he’s not scared. nothing on steve’s face makes him think he should be scared.

“i think i’ve wanted to kiss you for longer than i know,” bucky says softly. steve steps forward and takes his hands, both of them, flesh and metal. strokes his thumbs over bucky’s knuckles like they aren’t rough like sandpaper.

“things weren’t kind to guys like us,” steve says slowly, “but things are different now.”

bucky lets just one side of his mouth smile. “then show me.”

steve holds his face like he’s a precious thing and leans in and kisses him. it’s not fire or fireworks. it’s not raging river. it’s warm and soft in the afternoon light, streaming in from the window, and when they break apart they lean into each other and  _ laugh _ , because all those years they spent trying to find their place were wasted, because it was right in front of their eyes.

they make dinner, and it’s almost the same as any other day, except steve won’t stop staring at him, smile playing with the corners of his mouth, and eventually they end up holding hands across the table.

and when they fall asleep they do it face to face, bucky watching the ample splay of steve’s eyelashes as he finally shuts them to sleep. he doesn’t trust himself to be gentle enough to touch his face and not wake him, so he doesn’t, but even this is enough.

-

when bucky wakes up, steve has gotten up to feed the chickens but the bed is still warm. bucky rolls over so he’s face down in it, breathes in steve’s smell, and something he didn’t know he could still feel washes over him. it feels like hope. it feels like peace.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> who thought i'd be writing these losers again
> 
> incalyescent-writes.tumblr.com


End file.
